Twitter Feud: Clay Aiken vs. John Rich

Too bad John Rich and Clay Aiken never got to battle it out in the boardroom.

The singers and Celebrity Apprentice alums (Aiken was runner-up and Rich won the prior season) are duking it out on Twitter over their disparate views of the Republican National Convention, currently underway in Tampa.

"Playing drinking game with my brother now. We drink every time we see a black person on screen at the RNC convention #soberasamormon," Aiken tweeted tonight.

Well, Rich isn't letting that comment slide.

"We drink every time we see a black person at the RNC//CLAY! You should be ashamed for racist comments like THAT!WOW," the country singer tweeted back.

And he didn't stop there as his fans started chiming in to agree.

wonder how long it will be till @clayaiken takes that idiotic post down," Rich continued. "Clay, you're better than that...I hope. Sincerely, JR."

Then: "And to finish it off, @clayaiken hashtags soberasamormon? I thought your charity was for inclusion, not EXCLUSION. What happened?...Between the hashtag 'negrospotting' and what I've read ever since, I've just had enough of this racist nonsense. It's sick. PLS STOP."

Rich appears to have been referring to some of the tweets posted in response to Aiken's drinking game crack, including, from Chris Barnhart, "I'm drinking every time I see a white-as-paste celeb infer racism. #DrunkAsASkunk!" and, from TXN-1st, "@clayaiken raaaaaacist southern white guy #negrospotting."

Aiken, who competed on Celebrity Apprentice for the National Inclusion Project, which works to ensure that kids with disabilities get the same recreational opportunities as kids without, responded shortly afterward.

"My charity is. Why isn't your party? ;-) @johnrich," he tweeted.

Rich also got a tweet from an Aiken fan, who encouraged the singer to stop inflaming his followers: "@johnrich You owe @clayaiken an apology, John. And call off the dogs, please. thank you."

Their back-and-forth comes amid reports that a white RNC attendee threw peanuts at a black CNN camerawoman and said, "This is how we feed animals" (and was subsequently kicked out of the convention), but neither Rich nor Aiken directly referred to the incident in their tweets.

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